Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

“I’m letting him in.”

The door clicked and the pounding stopped.

Dammit, Bear, I thought. But he was probably right, he was always right, even when I didn’t want him to be right. And since my misadventure at the doctor’s office he had taken a more assertive approach to his role protecting me.

“Tanna! Where are you?”

Footsteps entered my domicile, passed my hiding place. He moved quietly, but not as quietly as I did.

In a silent rush I was behind him, holding a comb to his neck as though it were a weapon, “too slow, old man,” and then I wasn’t.

Mr. Landers was behind me somehow, one hand firmly holding my wrist, his strong arms immobilizing me. Carefully his hand spidered towards my fingers until he could verify that the comb I held was in fact only a comb.

“Where the hell have you been for the last month? I was afraid you’d left again without telling me.” he asked. Spinning me around to face him, he released me looked me up and down. “What’s happened to you?”

Despite being in my second trimester now, I weighed less than I had last time we met. Under Bear’s supervision I had grown lean and wiry, exercising to the limit of his instruments told him would be safe for a pregnant woman. If I had had a boyish figure before, now, excepting my belly, I was looking almost athletic.

“Well?”

“My hearing didn’t go well and I’ve been out of circulation.”

“What do you mean? Did they realize that you’re a threat to the state?”

“No.”

I wouldn't be here if that had been the outcome.

Landers silently waited for me to say more.

“The agent raped me at gunpoint.”

“Gasht and Harmon! The fuck? Are you okay? Is your daughter okay?”

“She’s fine. Physically I’m fine. Emotionally I’m kinda batshit fucked up, but I’m coping so far.”

“They usually do anomaly hearings at a doctor’s office if there’s any claim of physical transformation.”

I nodded.

“Did the doctor just let it happen?” he asked, incredulous.

“The agent made it clear that he was happy to shoot my doctor too. Then he made the doc fuck me, and raped the doctor in the ass while he did.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “I should have insisted that you not do the hearing. We could have created you a new ident, a whole backstory where you were always female. I should have insisted!”

“I had no idea that I’d ever have the misfortune of meeting an oligarch.”

“You have to report this.”

“If I go to the enforcers he’s just going to kill me

“He’s not a member of the oligarchy.”

“I saw the seal!”

“I don’t know what you saw, but it wasn’t real. And he has to be stopped.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I said.

“No, you are not. You will file a complaint at the local anomaly office. If working within the system fails, I will entertain discussion of murder and I will see to it that you do it correctly. And Tanna?”

“Yes?”

He raised two fingers to his neck, touching the skin over his carotid artery, just below his cheekbone.

“Dammit, girl, with real intruders, you cut first—” he drew his fingers diagonally across the thick blood vessel “—and save the wisecracks for after they hit the floor and stop moving. Then you call me.”

“Yes sir.”

—

Before I attended to the filing of my complaint, there was one more detail I needed to see to. If Landers was wrong, if this was suicide, I owed Dr. Johnson a heads up that his life would be endangered too.

Locating him to do so proved challenging.

The lock of his abandoned practice failed when I tried the door; there was nothing inside the bare rooms to give any clue where he had gone. Perhaps a detailed investigation would reveal some subtil clue, but I hardly had the time or skill for that kind of detective work. On the other hand, I knew who could find him easily.

“Bear? Where’d he go?”

“He was last recognized on the way out of the city. It seems he has taken up medical practice among the Outsiders.”

“Can we find him?”

“I can. But Tanna, there’s no need to. He’s safe out there.”

“What if he wants to come back someday? I have to tell him.”

Bear paused for a moment of silence that I interpreted as being equivalent to a sigh.

“You walked past a coffee stand on your way here. Grab yourself a decaf latte and have a seat. I’ll hire you a suitably safe ride.”

—

Six shots of decaffeinated espresso didn’t leave much room for steamed milk, but it added up to about as much caffeine as one real shot. Maybe?

“If you’d sleep enough, you wouldn't need need to scramble for stimulants,” Bear offered.

“Life’s too short to sleep enough, Bear.”

I was still scowling at my coffee when an armored transport pulled up to the curb beside my table. The unit marking on its bow was 7CH.
Not quite what I was expecting, but with Bear handling safety matters, I scarcely knew what I did expect.

“Your ride.”

I swilled the last dregs of a beverage which had been all dregs from the top and stood as armored troopers emerged. Apparently we had hired an entire off duty combat squad, in addition to their vehicle. They took positions, port arms and counter port arms on either side of the hatch and waited for me to enter. Expressionless helmets regarded me wordlessly as I stepped into the vehicle and found a seat to strap myself into.

—

The transport had drawn up its wheels to float over the rough ways outside the city, but now stabilizers were deploying as the craft settled.

I stepped out and found myself before a ramshackle clinic. It hardly looked like the cutting edge of medical technology, but Bear had assured me I would be taken to the correct location.

“’Pointment?” asked the teen behind the front desk, not looking up from a decrepit centrifuge. If he held the lid down just right, he might get a few more spins out of it.

“No appointment. I need to talk to Dr. Johnson. Just need a minute of his time. It’s about something that happened before he left the city.”

The teen’s eyes flickered away from the centrifuge, but didn’t travel any further up my body than my obviously pregnant belly. Mischief lit up his face.

“Ja, Docta Johns’n! Preg’mt lady here to see you, she say th’ bugger be your’n!”

I waited at the desk until Johnson emerged from an exam room.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know, this joker has zero respect for his elders and he gets away with it ‘cos he keeps my lab equipment running. If you’re here for a checkup, I’ll have to ask you to get in line.”

“I just need to talk to you for a minute. One minute.”

“As you see, I have a busy practice. Is it anything you can’t say in front of my patients?”

The small waiting room was comfortably crowded, and most of the Outsider patients at least pretended not to be listening.

I didn’t care what they might hear – I wasn’t going to be spilling any secrets.

“I’m going to report what happened at my hearing. I came here to warn you just in case he was telling the truth about hunting us down. I don’t want to cause you trouble if you ever go back to the city.”

“I’ll die before I go back, but thanks for the warning. Are you okay taking the chance yourself?”

“I have a very convincing advisor who insists that Angstrom was lying.”

“You know, life outside of city isn’t so bad. You could just bail out of the system, be free,” he said. The patients were trying even harder to appear disinterested as they listened intently. “We have a pretty good system out here, no monitoring. Real food, not always enough, but no FSBs. Weather, honest weather.” There was an unexpected hopeful note to the observation.

“Wait a second, are you trying to ask me to stay with you?”

“I don’t have a lot to offer, but— no, I can see you’re not interested.”

“I still believe my husband will come back.”

“Okay. If you ever need somewhere safe to go, we can always make room for one more. And there won’t be any further offers.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I better let you get back to work.”

“My name’s Scott.”

“Thank you, Scott.”

I stepped closer to hug him; my body reacted on its own, somehow my flesh recognized our physical history, more than what we had both survived.At the last instant I veered.

“Eat some real veggies,” he said after the kiss, “not just those damn bars. And I want to see your baby sometime, you hear?”

—

The transport landed to drop me off within noncommittally convenient walking distance of home. Once out, I would cut through the lobby of an arcology which fell under a mutual reciprocity treaty with my own, cut through the market, circle back again and peer down from a skybridge to check if my arrival had garnered any curiosity. As I disembarked the entire crew –pilot, EWO, five troopers– stood at attention on either side of the hatch. The pilot saluted.

Still not a word had been spoken.

No doubt Bear would see that they were suitably compensed for their effort but it seemed louche to simply walk away, treating them like machines or worse. There were rumors about the mil-clades, but the rumors couldn't all be true.

I faced the crew.

“Thank you for the ride.”

They were all statues, save one of the enlisted soldiers – PFC Carota, his name tag said.

He reached up and removed the helmet from his power armor, revealing tight orange corn-rows, pale freckled face and a buck-toothed grin.

“Our pleasure, ma’am.”

He looked pretty damn human to me.